Amit Shah says Hindi neither competed nor will do with any other Indian language

NEW DELHI: On the occasion of Hindi Diwas, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday stressed the need to strengthen all Indian languages and dialects with the hope that Hindi will become a medium to empower all.

Expressing his views on the occasion of Hindi Diwas, the Minister said, “Hindi neither ever has competed and nor will compete with any other Indian language”, and that “original and creative expression of any country is possible only through its own language which we have to carry with us as all Indian languages and dialects are our cultural heritage”.

Extending his best wishes to the countrymen on the occasion of Hindi Diwas, Shah mentioned that Hindi unites the diversity of languages in the world’s largest democracy.

“Hindi has been a democratic language. It has honoured different Indian languages and dialects as well as many global languages and adopted their vocabularies, sentences and grammar rules. It also played an unprecedented role in uniting the country during the difficult days of the independence movement. It instilled a feeling of unity in a country divided into many languages and dialects. Hindi, as a language of communication, played an important role in carrying forward the freedom struggle from East to West and North to South in the country”, stated the Home Minister.

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Considering the important role of Hindi in the freedom movement and after independence, Shah said, the architects of the Constitution had accepted Hindi as the official language on September 14, 1949. “Original and creative expression of any country is possible only through its own language”, said the Minister.

He emphasized that the progress of our language is the basis of all-round progress and that all our Indian languages and dialects are our cultural heritage, which we have to carry with us. Shah added that “Hindi neither ever has competed and nor will compete with any other Indian language. “Only by strengthening all our languages, a strong nation will be created”, he said.

The Home Minister expressed his belief that Hindi will become a medium to empower all the local languages. He said that the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language was constituted to periodically review the work done in the official language in the country. It was given the responsibility to review the progress made in the use of Hindi in government work across the country and prepare its report and present it to the President.

Shah added that he was happy to inform that the 12th volume of this report has been presented to the President. Only 9 volumes of the report were submitted till 2014, but we have submitted 3 volumes in the last 4 years only. Since 2019, Hindi Advisory Committees have been formed in all 59 ministries and their meetings are also being organized regularly.

From the point of view of increasing the use of official language in various areas of the country, a total of 528 Town Official Language Implementation Committees (TOLIC) have been formed so far. Even in foreign countries, Town Official Language Implementation Committees have been formed in London, Singapore, Fiji, Dubai and Port-Louis. India has also taken initiatives to promote the use of the Hindi language in the United Nations.

The Minister said that a new tradition of organizing the ‘All India Official Language Conference’ has also been started by the Department of Official Language. The first All India Official Language Conference was organized in Banaras on November 13-14, 2021 and the second conference was organized in Surat on September 14, 2022. This year the third All India Official Language Conference is being organized in Pune.

He said that in order to develop the official language according to technology, the Department of Official Language has created a memory-based translation system ‘Kanthastha’. Taking a new initiative, the Department of Official Language has also created the dictionary ‘Hindi Shabd Sindhu’. This dictionary is being continuously enriched by including words from Indian languages included in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution. The department has also made an ‘e-Mahashabdkosh’ mobile app comprising a total of 90,000 words and an ‘e-Saral’ dictionary of about 9,000 sentences. (ANI)